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The Current Scene Correspondence implies that two or more parties are in contact with one another in writing. Consequently correspondence teaching is taken to mean teaching through the printed lessons sent by the teacher to the student in the course of which the student and the teacher are in regular contact with each other. Teaching by correspondence is a natural means of instruction if the instructor and the student are at a distance from each other. This distance is inevitable in the geo-economic context of India. A correspondence or distance educational study programme launched by a university thus fills the large gaps left unabridged by regular courses of study which presuppose the physical presence of the teachers and their students at a given place and time. Correspondence education is not an entirely alien thing grafted on the time-hardened tree of traditional education. In the words of Renee F. Erods, it can be traced back to Plato whose Epistles are the first concrete instance of teaching through the written word. In the 19th century, the idea of using the genial agency of the post office for teaching European languages was put into active practice by Charles Touissant and Gustav Langenscheidt, a German and a Frenchman. They started a school in Germany for this purpose. In the U.S.A., the earliest pioneer of the Home Study Programme was Dr. William Rainey Harper in the Harvard University who authored the idea of starting a new project in 1892 for using the printed word as the medium of teaching. The project offered 39 different course by correspondence. The first enrolment was a total of 82; 5 students dropped in the very first month. Fourteen years later when Dr. Harper died, the enrolment in 297 different courses had gone up to 1587, and as many as 113 teachers were engaged in teaching by post. By the middle of the twentieth century the experiment of correspondence education transcended the initial experimental stage and became a fundamental part of the educational edifice in the USA, Russia, Sweden, Japan, Australia, Great Britain, Germany and France. Educational structure of the Russia, particularly since 1958, has developed an in-built and yet broad-based programme of correspondence education in addition to a network of evening schools and colleges ranging from secondary to university level and in all sectors of the educational pyramid including technical, specialised and vocational education. The total enrolment in correspondence courses in secondary education was 1,64,000 in 1960 which jumped to 2,00,700 in 1970. The universities and institutions of higher education have stable student population in correspondence courses, and students from as distant places as Siberia join courses offered by universities in Soviet Asian Republics. While major universities have their own departments of correspondence education, there are a large number of institutions exclusively operating correspondence courses. The All Union Correspondence Polytechnical Institute, which provides courses in technical subjects, has a very large enrolment. Even in 1960 about 25 per cent of the student body was studying through correspondence courses or in the evening shifts. The famed Leningrad University in the same year had an enrolment of over 7,000 students for correspondence courses and about 8,000 as day-scholars and resident students The University of Kiev enrolled over 5,000 for correspondence study programmes out of about 11,000 students enrolled with it. A survey of student population studying through the correspondence medium reveals that seventy percent of the courses thus offered are devoted to teacher training and allied teaching skills. Tens of thousands of teachers working in Russian schools are the alumini of correspondence courses and evening institutions. Besides, there is a network of - what has been called - "accelerated courses", "condensed courses" and the projects of the "School of the Prolonged Day." Today, teaching by correspondence has become an accepted thing. It has obtained for itself a position of power and prestige in the educational realm of the world. There have been thirtyfive international conferences on correspondence education conducted by the International Council on Correspondence Education (I.C.C.E.) between 1938 and 1976. The success of correspondence education has silenced even its critics, and according to W.R. Young, since 1934, the teaching by correspondence has "become generally accepted in a great many countries of the world." The scene as it obtains at present in U.K. is as optimistic as in USSR or USA. The Council for the Accreditation of Correspondence Colleges has accredited 33 colleges and institutes which are its integral members. The Council is a voluntary organization which was set up in 1969 by the Government and Correspondence Colleges jointly. The total student enrolment in 1976 was between 350,000 and 410,000, the stable figure being something like 382,000. The courses offered by these colleges cover almost all areas and disciplines including technical, medical and engineering courses, besides courses in Arts, Sociology, General Education, Chartered Accountancy, Insurance, Civil Service, Law, Business Administration, Distributive Trades and Management, Agriculture, Journalism, Architecture, Interior Decoration, Salesmanship, Nursing, Home Science - both at the graduate and postgraduate levels. The college known for their high student response and quality of instruction include : Wolsey Hall, Oxford, The Chartered Insurance Institute, London, College of Law, Correspondence Tuition Service, Guidgord, Surrey, H. Foulks Lynch & Co. Ltd., London, Metropolitan College and Metropolitan College of Law, St. Albans, Herts., The School of Accountancy and Business Studies, Glasgow, Medical Correspondence College, London, etc. etc. Of these, to take one example, Wolsey Hall, Oxford, was started as far back as 1874. Besides the two G.C.E., 'O' and 'A' Examinations (advanced and lower level) which include hundreds of subjects, this college prepares students for degree courses in arts and science. Over a dozen professional courses are also offered to the students. The total number of students enrolled with Wolsey Hall, Oxford, range between twenty thousand and twenty-five thousand. About 55% students are from U.K. and the rest from overseas. However, it is the Open University London which caught the imagination of many a planner in developing countries. The idea of a University in the Air was first mooted by Mr. Harold Wilson in a speech in Glasgow in 1963. The report of the Planning Committee was finalized in early 1969. Technically the university emerged into being at a ceremony in the building of the Royal Society on 23 July 1969 when the First chancellor of the University was installed in office. By January 1971, about 183 full-time teachers were in place and more than 400 others took care of the students' academic problems as part-time 'tutors'. The student population in the Open University courses includes housewives, armed forces personnel, administrators and managers, technicians, farmers, miners, shopkeepers and school dropouts. Hermods, Malmo (Sweden) is a world-known institution started as a private school by two educationist-founders in 1898. It was only recently that status of an autonomous foundation was restored to it. It has no state aid and as such is the reverse of the Open University which is completely state-aided. The motto of Hermods is "progress of Perish". The annual budget is about 44 million Kronas (Sweden) i.e., about four million Sterling. It has a permanent faculty and a set of editors which number about 70. The institute offers about 500 courses, mostly preparing for school examinations but about half a dozen dealing with college studies. The University of Lund holds the examination fro the college students and awards degrees. The G.C.E. examinations are run and official certificates are issued by Hernmods. The total number of students ranges between 65,000 to 100,000. While France does not occupy the leading most place in the fraternity of correspondence education programmes in the world, it has the pride of place in combining the printed word and the recorded word. The Centre National De Tele-Enseignement, Vanves, Paris, has an enrolment of about 87,000 students with its head office, while the five provincial units at Grenobie, Lille, Rouen, Toulouse and Lyon have a total enrolment of about 75,000 students. The project is government-aided with a budget of fifty million new francs a year. About 50,000 records are sent free and as many as 14,000 tapes are supplied to the students on payment during their course of study. A record two million sheets are cyclostyled or photo-copied daily. The staff in the Centre at Paris has 502 full-time members in the administrative sector and 1480 regular and wholetime staff in the academic area. The staff in the other five centres has a strength of about 2200 members. The scene in USA needs only one glance to know its rich content and large range. Chicago State College and North-Eastern Illinois State College are members of a 20-College consortium "University Without Walls" programme under a 415,000-dollars grant from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. There are no degree requirements, no prescribed time for getting a degree and unlimited opportunities to learn outside the classroom and the campus. Each student designs his own individualized programme, with guidance of a faculty adviser based on his own interests. The programme is based on two central principles; (a) that relevant learning can take place in many locations, in the classroom, on the job, in individual work projects and in the give-and take of seminar discussions; and (b) that a variety of geographical locations can broaden a student's horizons and help him gain perspectives that are not possible without the confines of a single campus. University Without Walls (UWW) is a network of varied alternatives on different campuses which emerged from a proposal of some 100 professors attending Project Change over in the summers of 1967-69. Out of these, sessions emerged the plan of the 'University Without Walls' designed and fostered by the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, financed by grants from the Government. The Ford Foundation also lent a helping hand in it. Though a recent phenomenon, correspondence education in India is not something unusual or uncommon, Beginning its humble role in 1962 with Delhi University offering courses in B.A. arts, it has assumed a gigantic role for itself in the university education. More than 100 universities now offer courses in different disciplines of arts, commerce, education, laws, and languages. In addition to the accredited universities, institutes of national and regional standing offer various refresher and in-services courses by correspondence for their distant students. Like the degrees awarded by universities running correspondence courses, institutes with statutory control of the State or the Central Government, also award their own degrees and diplomas to correspondence students and these are recognised by various employment agencies including Government departments. Presently, both the Open Universities as well as the Conventional Universities have initiated hundreds of programmes through distance learning for helping the students. These universities run the correspondence courses through their directorates of correspondence courses or institutes / centres for distance education. In order to run these centres successfully, the following points should be considered and remembered on a continuing basis for bringing efficiency and productivity :
1) Job oriented programmes. The Institute of Open and Distance Education of Barkatullah Vishwavidyalaya, Bhopal and the Collaborating Institution (PRT - I - PEER) will help each other in exchanging ideas and implementing the need based programmes for having a sustainable country and for managing the third meillennium and 21st century. |
